The Malignant Myth of Parochial Ministry

I want to suggest that Parochial Ministry does not exist. This is not to say that we do not have a cult of worshiping the stand alone parish with a "robust ministry" and many parishes "thriving" by the standards of said cult. This is the realm of the Grande Poobah Missional that replaced the man behind the curtain once traditional methods of doing church began to falter in the 1970's. A GoGo Boy with many a name, be it missional or mission shaped or radical welcome or emergent or some else... what we have to realize is that no matter how much glittered deodorant this lad applies the disco balls can only distract us for so long.

Read Radical Welcome

Which is not to say that all these overlapping words and books written on the many variations of these themes have not been vital. When the night is young we need the paid dancers in the club to get the fervent gyrations going to welcome the club kids onto the floor. We would not be where we are, which is a lot better place than we would be, if they had not been written and read. Many leaders and parishes are still in great need of learning the rhythms thus presented. Maybe few are ready for the next step but it is a necessary one that needs to be taken sooner rather than later if the church is going to have the mettle to be reborn from its current death.

What these books have done is provide us the base to build vital relationships with our communities that create sustainable models of church. These relationships take different forms in different contexts but are all founded on basic concepts of hospitality, community organizing, and breaking down barriers between church and community. They have given us a model of how parish ministry can continue to be in the midst of communities. There is, however, a catch.

What all of these models expect is for a parish to be surrounded by a community that is capable of providing those relationships. That any community can be a space in which this new model of parochial ministry can thrive. The reality is that there are communities unable to create such a space, where the perfect implementation of the best practices are not going to manifest a sustainable parochial ministry. Communities where parishes are going to decline to missions and missions are going to decline into nothing no matter how much they excel at best practices unless something more happens.

One wears a zebra print vest for the purpose of dancing...
[Edge of Seventeen]

This myth, that we can maintain robust independent parishes if only we can get them to take up best practices, is the malignant myth that must die. This is being a well dressed wall flower that refuses to dance. We have to abandon this sense of independent parochial ministries and move to a model where everyone recognizes that their work is non-parochial. We have to take the lessons we have learned about relationship building and resource sharing with our communities and begin applying them to our relationships with each other.

I live non-parochial ministry. I do not have the freedom to maintain any delusion that my ministry cannot exist without strong stable relationships with the parishes and diocesan structures that surround it. On a campus there simply is not the stability of individuals, groups, or structures for us to thrive independent of the Episcopal Church as a whole. What it also means is that I consistently encounter the competition for resources, the redundancy, and the waste inherent to parish and diocesan structures as they live out lives at various levels of isolation. This is where we need to begin building relationships for mutual sustainability and life.

EpiscoDisco

This is about activating regional youth ministry programs, regional sexton services, regional assistant clergy, regional programing of church groups and organizations, regional printing, production, and web services, and mutual awareness of where collaboration can happen. The Episcopal Identity might no longer have much traction for the general populace but we who are Episcopalian need to become aware of the fullness of our identity and what is happening within it, and ensure that it is robust and thriving throughout a region not just in a single ministry point. It means a whole lot of work, a lot of repairing relationships, and a lot of overturning the status quo... but if we can do it then everyone will be in a better space to thrive and find support because we will be ministries in relationship with each other not just in proximity of each other... we will stop being wall flowers and join the gogo dancers.

Christian Mission: Cultural Genocide or Mutual Transformation

What does it mean to take up the faith of those who have raged war against your people, imprisoned you without trial, and slowly granted you limited freedom as you began to take up their ways and culture? This is the question posed to us by the life of Okuh Hatuh, Sun Dancer. A Cheyenne warrior captured by US forces during the Red River War, imprisoned without trial in a detention camp in Florida, and slowly granted freedoms as he conformed to expectations of western culture and faith practice eventually becoming a Deacon in the Episcopal Church.

To honor the deeds of Okuh Hatuh and maintain our faith in God’s grace we can only assume that his is a life more in harmony with God’s grace than the christians that so horrendously butchered it. That God’s grace is something that can triumph over every horrendous act done in God’s name. Elsewise we are looking at little more than a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Looking at Christian missions to indigenous peoples throughout the world we see two themes in action. One theme holds to right action and thinking being crucial for our relationship with God. Those who hold to this theme believe that western cultural norms and morality are an intrinsic aspect of Christian life. For them to become civilized, to become Christian, is to conform to western cultural norms. In the wake of these Christians we have, again and again, the genocide of the cultures if not the peoples themselves.

The other theme is that of the enculturation of Christianity within the indigenous group.  This group wonders what happens when the Gospel and the message of Jesus is introduced to a culture and the culture is allowed to accept or reject it within their own context. This group wants to know what happens when a culture learns to Proclaim Christ Crucified from within itself. This group is willing to be transformed by new revelations of the spirit and to place aside their cultural norms found to not be of Christ. From this theme we have some of the most beautiful moments of Grace in recent history.

When we as Christians engage others for the sake of joining our faith we always are presented with a choice of theme. Is our goal to enforce our expectations and understanding of what it means to be Christian and transform them while remaining the same? Or is our goal to enter into a relationship with another individual where they are allowed to find how to Proclaim Christ Crucified from within their context, and in so doing transform both themselves and us?

Youth and Campus Ministry... living together... mass hysteria...

Maybe this is an absurd idea... I think, however, that it would be really nifty if Youth Ministry and Campus Ministry had a healthy vibrant relationship. Youth Ministries, in my mind, should be seeking to be in healthy relationship with relevant Campus Ministries and vice versa. To be really honest for me this is a no brainer. 

Sometimes, though, when I mention this idea it feels like I have suggested we take up human sacrifice and want to plunge the church into mass hysteria. That this would be some epic crossing of the streams and we all know that crossing the streams is bad. Everyone looks at me as if I am the person who failed to keep his head clear and now a giant marshmallow man will destroy New York.

To be clear what I am not talking about is going back to a time when Episcopal Campus Ministry was an inward focused institution dependent upon the church to supply numbers for a special Sunday student program. I do not think we could bring that back if we tried and I would not want to even if we could. Episcopal Campus Ministries were forced to become nimble, crazy, and missional long before it was cool and we are not going to be forced back into that parish style box at this point. 

At this point our most effective campus ministries are running full tilt in missional/mission shaped/relationship based/emergent styles. It is the basic ethos by which the campus ministry I serve runs and one of the reasons we found a mutual call was a general commitment to this style of ministry. This means we spend a lot of time striving to create a worshiping community that relates to and impacts the campus environment and less time focused on fostering the institution of the Episcopal Church. As things stand we are a growing vibrant community with a solid grounding. If things remain as they are then things will be good. I am not writing this because if something does not change then my ministry will fail. I am writing this because if I can build better relationships then my ministry and the ministry of the Episcopal Church will get even better.

The deal is that Mission Shaped ministry and Parish ministry are not polar opposites. They are symbiotic creatures that create a robust church when brought into full partnership. They are like a jam filled pastry. A person can just eat jam or just eat pastry dough but the magic happens when one takes a deep generous bite of a jam filled pastry. If we are going to have robust mission shaped ministry and robust parish ministry creating an overall robust church then we have to put the two into interworked layers of relationship and let them bake. 

 

So the plan, the absurd plan, is that we create an overall ethos of Episcopal Youth Ministry that empowers Episcopal Campus Ministry that then empowers Episcopal Ministry at large.... we can even throw some powdered sugar on it for good measure. 

My ministry, as it stands, is doing pretty good at empowering Episcopal Ministry at large. We are baptizing, confirming, and receiving members into the church. My students are working and volunteering at Episcopal Parishes, Schools, and Camps. My students are actively discerning calls to ordained ministry. That layer is working.

It is the first layer, the Episcopal Youth Ministry to Episcopal Campus Ministry layer that seems to be having problems. The relationship dynamic here simply is not vibrant and healthy, in many places it does not exist at all. What I want to present is a place in my ministry where this relationship is working.

I have a great relationship with one of the local youth leaders. The parish is in a suburban area about thirty minutes from the university with an amazing youth and family ministry program. If a relationship exists between the parish and a student at the university I get an email of mutual introduction. About half of those emails result in a student becoming a regular participant in the campus ministry, which is fine. The point is not to force the students to involve themselves in campus ministry but to introduce them to the concept of campus ministry and the chaplain. It is great that this parish is thirty minutes away but any parish can take up this email exchange and create this level of relationship. The problem is that this does not happen.

The main reason this does not happen, that I encounter, is that youth and parish leadership just do not think to create this basic type of relationship with campus ministries and incorporate their graduating youth into those relationships. Sometimes I hear arguments about how they want the graduate to be able to freely discern, to not be forced to go to the campus ministry, to be able to be part of a parish, or the like. The deal is that every campus minister I know wants every student they encounter to be able to do just that... they just want to be sure that the student knows they have a resource as they go about that if they need it. 

So this is the core of what I would like to see with parishes. Initiative on the part of parishes to build a relationship with the campus ministries where their former youth become students, ensuring that youth know that campus ministry exists if they need it, and whenever possible a mutual introduction of an incoming student to a chaplain. I try to build these relationships in reverse whenever I can but it simply is not the same.

The other part has to do with diocesan and national youth ministries and events. Our forms should have space for high school seniors to mark where they are going to school and to provide the local chaplain or parish their contact information. Our events should have time for seniors and college students to interact with a college chaplain and build relationships and awareness. Our diocesan camp brought the chaplains in for a day this summer, just to hang around and make one announcement at lunch. The connections with graduating seniors and staff who were in college was electric. 

So that is my absurd idea. Youth Ministry having a basic and healthy relationship with Campus Ministry. I do not know why these ideas are so controversial. I do not know why these relationships are not natural for our ministries... but for some reason they are not natural. I hope someday they can be... I want my Jam Pastry... I want to cross the streams and save New York.